Translating Behavioral Theory into Technological Interventions: Case Study of an mHealth App to Increase Self-reporting of Substance-Use Related Data
This addresses the problem of improving intervention effectiveness in mHealth for researchers and practitioners, but it is incremental as it applies existing theory to a specific domain.
The paper tackled the challenge of translating abstract behavioral theory into concrete mHealth app features, using a case study of the SARA app to increase daily self-reporting adherence in substance-use research among adolescents and young adults, resulting in a design process informed by operant conditioning theory, user feedback, and empirical studies.
Mobile health (mHealth) applications are a powerful medium for providing behavioral interventions, and systematic reviews suggest that theory-based interventions are more effective. However, how exactly theoretical concepts should be translated into features of technological interventions is often not clear. There is a gulf between the abstract nature of psychological theory and the concreteness of the designs needed to build health technologies. In this paper, we use SARA, a mobile app we developed to support substance-use research among adolescents and young adults, as a case study of a process of translating behavioral theory into mHealth intervention design. SARA was designed to increase adherence to daily self-report in longitudinal epidemiological studies. To achieve this goal, we implemented a number of constructs from the operant conditioning theory. We describe our design process and discuss how we operationalized theoretical constructs in the light of design constraints, user feedback, and empirical data from four formative studies.